Swordfish / Video Games

Examples of The Password Is Always "Swordfish" in video games.

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"Swordfish" examples

• A variant in Brink!: In one of the Agents of Change missions, a member of the Security confirms that he's an ally by reciting "swordfish114" to them.
• In the FPS Cold Winter, guess what's the password needed to enter the Golden Narguile Club?
• Joked about in A Dance with Rogues. The password to get into the sewer entrance is "stinkfish".
• Also comes up in the first Discworld computer game, in which the password is "Blah, Blah, Blah spoons blah blah blah swordfish blah blah blah Simon says."
• There's a quest in Dungeons & Dragons Online in which the player characters comes to a locked door and has three choices to give for the password: "Friend and Enter", "Open sesame", and "Swordfish". When you speak to the wizard you had rescued, he tells you that the password is none of these.
• In Final Fantasy VI Brave New World, the password to access the secret passage in South Figaro is Swordfish.
• In Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure, you can try to use "Swordfish" when Buzz needs to give the doorman to a local Voodoo Club a password. The doorman rejects it, saying that it is "too classic."
• In the computer game Impossible Mission, the goal of the game is to collect microfilm which, when reassembled in your PDA, delivers the villain hideout door's nine letter password. One of the passwords that can be generated this way is of course 'Swordfish'.
• In Kingdom of Loathing, an adventure on the Poopdeck of the ship at the Obligatory Pirate's Cove has you randomly asked by a pirate "What be the password?" If you've read the appropriate quest item, you'll correctly answer that the password is "swordfish", and unlock a new area to explore. To further hammer the trope home, the adventure this happens in (which doesn't happen if you don't read your father's MacGuffin diary) is even titled "It's Always Swordfish."
  • A Clan can purchase a speakeasy and use it to order some very nice drinks. Problem is, in order to unlock these drinks you need to give a password. Each clan has a different password for each drink, but the Lucky Lindy in particular has the same password throughout all clans. Guess what this password is...
  • "Swordfish" was also the password to Caveman Dan's cave in the Time-Twitching Tower event zone. When the player character learned it, their response was "Of course it is."
• In Leisure Suit Larry 1: In the Land of the Lounge Lizards Reloaded, Larry can try to use it.
  Doorman: What's the password?
  Larry: Uhmm... Swordfish?
  Doorman: Dang fool, show some originality.
• Subverted in Pirate101, the player is told that the password to see the Frogfather is "swordfish". The player is later told the real password is "ribbet". This appears even more ridiculous, since the Frogfather is an anthropomorphic frog. But while it seems silly, it's Crazy Enough to Work. Nobody's ever guessed it.
• "Schwertfisch" in the Quest for Glory I VGA remake.
• "Pesce Spada" in Hero-U.
• In Return to Zork the lighthouse keeper's first words to you are: "What's the password? Can't let you in without the password. And don't try swordfish, I know it's not that. I tried it myself, I couldn't get in..."
• Subverted in the Sam & Max: Freelance Police episode, "The Mole, the Mob, and the Meatball", "swordfish" is Sam's first guess at the Toy Mafia's password (for once, though, it isn't).
• In Shadowrun Returns, while infiltrating an office building, the player can answer "Swordfish?" when asked for a passphrase. The guard quips "Nice try" and attacks.

Other bad password choices

• Exaggerated in Artifacts and Antiquity. The storage site the game takes place in has a security system where every possible word (including gibberish) is accepted as the password.
• A common passcode that appears in both System Shock and BioShock, as well as Deus Ex and Dishonored, is the number 451. This is a reference to the office door code for Looking Glass Studios (the developers of the System Shock series) which in turn was a reference to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.
  • Taken to 11 (or perhaps 12) with one particular keypad in Deus Ex. The password for a Majestic 12 base is... 12. A two digit code with no penalties for failed attempts. Meaning that not only can you easily brute force it, but you'll get the right code on either your thirteenth or second try (depending on if you started with 00 or 11).
  • Speaking of BioShock, the password for Australian supervisor Kyburz's office is the date of Australia Day. In case you don't know it, there's a huge poster with the date right outside it. In US date format's month/day rather than pretty much the rest of the world's day/month. Even when sold in Australia! Heavily lampshaded in a nearby audio diary; its recorder mocks Kyburz for being so stupid and notes that his employees are constantly breaking in to steal the petty cash.
  • Similarly, in both Crusader games, every time you find a locked door, somewhere nearby will be an unlocked PC displaying an email informing the owner of the PC what the password to the door in.
• Double Subverted in Advance Wars: Days of Ruin. The 10-digit passcode to a top-secret emergency nuclear bunker isn't anything obvious (and the system locks you out after two tries)... But the amnesiac Mysterious Waif knows it. Later justified in that she was specifically loaded with military knowledge as part of her creation.
• The combination of a briefcase in Barrow Hill is the license plate number of its owner's car, which you find crashed and abandoned within the first half-hour of play. The only tricky bit is that there's an X in the plate code, so the number of digits is only right if you multiply.
• In Batman: Arkham City a password used among Jim Gordon and his precinct cops is "Sarah", the name of his second wife. Also, all the passwords you have to crack with the Cryptographic Sequencer are this. If they're for progression in the story, they are related to the owner of the place (Penguin and Hugo Strange are common offenders); if it's for Riddler Trophies, it's always something to do with brains or something (given that Riddler's an Insufferable Genius); and so on. The only thing that can slightly complicate this is that you don't have to type them, but tune the Sequencer to form the word.
  • Returns in Batman: Arkham Origins, with passwords either fitting the location ("Coast Guard" at a harbor station) or theme (Firefly's all relate to his pyromania). Humorously, the passwords for two of Enigma's jamming towers actually reflect his Villainous Breakdown: "AREUKIDDING" and "UWILLREGRETTHIS".
• Unintentional example in the Bleach DS fighting game series. Money can be unlocked using three passwords that are written on the touch screen, which in the second game are either an open jar, a pawprint, or a poorly drawn rabbit. For people outside of Japan, there's no way of knowing what the password is, as it was in a Japanese magazine exclusive. Furthermore, the game reads the markings on the screen with an incredible lack of accuracy. However, making random scribbles will actually count as having the password before even drawing it.
• In Borderlands 2, the password that will open the door to let you gain access to The Angel is "I love you." The only minor technical problem is that the password must be spoken by Handsome Jack himself or by one of his body-double clones, the door is protected by a heavily fortified bunker, and the bunker is protected by a disentegration field. So perhaps a weak password isn't too much of a problem here...
• Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! has the secret passcode for access to RedBelly's pirate crew gate. "Arrr." It's no secret and no surprise that the Scavs of Elpis are morons almost to a man.
• In Breath of Fire III, when Momo access a laboratory computer which requires a password, she assumes people use their friend's name as their password and correctly guesses "Pelet" (the lab creator) as the password. Lampshaded for being little too obvious. The other passwords require searching the lab which are "Repsol" (Momo's father), "AA" (Project) and the third is a little trickier having to know the right combination of five numbers.
• Alex Mason's password on the computer terminal in Call of Duty: Black Ops is "password". There's also an email from Hudson, telling Mason to change the password or he'll change it for him. None of the others are much better, either—John F. Kennedy's is "lancer" (his Secret Service code name), the unseen Dr. Adrienne Smith and Richard Nixon use the names of their pets, etc.—to the point that once you know a password other than Mason's it's relatively easy to figure out the passwords for every character who has an account on the terminal just by reading emails.
• In Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle, Tanner's password for revealing the location of Turtle Island is easy enough for Morgane to eventually guess: it's "Carmine", the name of the dead wife he extravagantly memorialised on the island named after him.
• Chrono Cross has an odd example of a password. At one point, the party (disguised as guards) meet another set of guards in front of a treasure room. They are asked the password, and given some logical-sounding choices. None of them work; the password is entered by just standing there until the guards acknowledge that silence is the password.
• Almost all of the computers in Code 7 are protected with embarrassingly bad passwords; even yours! Most of them can be easily brute-forced by knowing some personal information; name, birth date, name of pet, name of partner, etc. One scientist on Schrödinger Station in "Episode 0: Allocation" never even changed their password from the default ChangeMe.
• In Covert Action, the passwords are always simple English words, and searching the area will generally give you a few clues, in the form of a random letter from the word. You could keep looking for clues until you have the entire word, but this is unnecessary because you can also guess. Of course, guessing incorrectly sets off the alarm.
• In Crush Crush, the protagonist is apparently bad with passwords.
  Nina: Your Jazzers account was hacked again. I took the liberty of changin' your password from "123" to "imabloodyeejit".
• The Darkside Detective:
  • The password to the internet computer in the town library is apparently "1234".
  • The password to the computer rig used by ditzy conspiracy theorist Dooley to scan for alien signals is "password". On learning this, McQueen says it's "as secure as it is surprising".
• Played with in Deathloop: Dr. Wenjie Evans has the good sense of using some Techno Babble process to generate a code that changes in every time loop (the only code in the game that does so) for the door containing a switch capable of killing everyone in her lab... but she still writes it down on a stick note attached to a whiteboard so all her alternate selves can read it.
• Late in Detroit: Become Human, Conner needs to figure out his partner Hank Anderson's password to access some crucial evidence. The password is "fuckingpassword".
• Passwords in Deus Ex are usually single words... and can often be found on various notes in the same building (if not the same room) as the computer in question. Locked in the cabinet sometimes, but that's easily solved with a lockpick.
  • This gets lampshaded later on when many of the emails you find on PDAs start scolding the minions for keeping the passwords in easily found locations. It's around that point that you stop finding them so easily. The codes you do find tend to be revealed less straightforwardly; in one late-game example the password reindeerflotilla is found by digging through a pseudo-Linux (BlueOS, apparently) install crash log.
  • The Nameless Mod is slightly better at this as many of the easy passwords are explicitly temporary (like after a server crash) and explicitly easy as they are just tests. The passwords that are really insecure are frequently lampshaded.
  • Perhaps the most extreme (but little-known) example of this, though, is that Anna Navarre's killphrase needs to be retrieved from two computers in the UNATCO base. Ideally you're supposed to hack the computers, or use the login/password combination "demiurge/archon" that Paul gives you if he survived. In fact, though, the self-destruct key for UNATCO's incredibly expensive badass cyborg killing machine can be found by logging into the relevant computers with "guest/guest".
    Alex Jacobson: I installed UNATCO's security myself. It's unbeatable.
  • Alex himself has a storage room in his office which is locked by a keypad. The code is "2001", which is prominently displayed on a huge poster right next to the door.
  • In Deus Ex: Human Revolution the (otherwise unattainable) code to the bomb in "Smash The State" is "0000". Inputting the code will get you the achievement "Lucky Guess" which has the description "Next time Jacob should use a more complex code to arm his bombs."
  • Lee Hong, who is repeatedly stated to not be very bright, has set the access code of his apartment to "1234".
  • Human Revolution has many, many bad password choices by the standards of today. The one for Adam's office computer is "mandrake" (which was chosen by Pritchard, a genius computer security specialist), and example mook passwords include "morpheus", "stinger", "index", and "macro". Like the original, passwords can often be found in Pocket Secretaries near the associated computer. One (well-hidden) PDA even has a dozen of the logins and passwords for the Detroit Police Department computers on it.
  • A computer in one of the Sarif Industries offices has a password listed nowhere in the game... except on a post-it note to the left of the computer reading, "Password: "Eclipse"". A lampshade is immediately hung on this when checking said computer's email. One of the emails is from the network administrator Pritchard talking about keeping your work computer secure and closes with "ABOVE ALL, DO NOT WRITE DOWN YOUR PASSWORD!" Another computer nearby doesn't need a password to get in, and there's another Pritchard email that closes with "ABOVE ALL, REMEMBER TO LOCK YOUR MACHINE BEFORE LEAVING YOUR DESK!"
  • Human Revolution lampshades this at one point; a homeless woman will tell you that she overheard one cop berating another for choosing 'patriotism' as the password for the armory door. You can later break into the police station and loot their armory for some nice guns; they never bothered to change the password to anything else.
  • You can actually come across a PDA inside the Omega Ranch facility containing a password that a computer tech sent to a soldier because the idiot kept constantly asking him what the password was. Another critical password is left lying underneath a couch by a maid, who in the same PDA swore to her boss that she would guard it with her life.
  • A computer in one of the Prague apartments in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided has a prominently placed photo next to it. Picking up and examining the photo reveals a date written on the back - the date of the tenant's wedding to her (now-deceased^*killed in the Aug Incident) husband, which doubles as her password.
• The early PC game D/Generation featured a computer terminal where you had to extract a password for a door from the rant of a crazy hostage. It could be one of 2 or 3 things, all of which were just one, simple English word like "pestilence."
• Dishonored has a number of safes, most of which can be opened using fairly obvious clues from the notes found near the safes. The art dealer Bunting is a notable exception. Fortunately he has a pain fetish and is already bound and blindfolded in a torture device at a brothel. A few electrical zaps past his limit gets him to give up the combination.
  • A recurring offscreen character in the series is Dr. Luigi Galvani, who the player can repeatedly rob. Galvani not only leaves the combination lying around in his home, but insists on using the exact same password for his safe every time, despite the multiple robberies. When he rents a deposit box in a heavily guarded bank entered during Death of the Outsider, the staff are exasperated by his demand for it to use the same password.
• Doom³ not only has people frequently leaving their PDAs, which act as clearance to access various devices and areas by themselves, laying around often near the things they allow access to, but the passwords for lockers and such are on them. In one area the password for a locker is "123" not because the one setting it is an idiot, but the people who are supposed to remember the passwords for them are too stupid to remember them, so much so that they even forget THAT.
• The one password in EarthBound (1994) was not of the "easily guessed" type, but was ridiculous nonetheless: It consisted of waiting three minutes. Who would guess that? This is later subverted by another character asking for the password. As the Player Character does not answer, he (or it) attacks ("someone so quiet is either extremely shy, or extremely dangerous").
• Eternal Twilight: The password to the final door in Twilight Temple is "TWILIGHT" in all caps.
• In Fable Demon Doors protect ancient treasures from being taken, but each of them is also obsessed with riddles which they will open for anyone that solves them. One in particular requires the player to hit nearby rocks corresponding to I H S T to spell out it's password, and while there is an NPC nearby that will tell the player the password if paid, it's not necessary as there are only 3 words in the entire English language those letters can spell. Hilariously, one of them will send Balverines to attack you if you use it.
• Used in all manner of fashions in Fallout 3. The hacking minigame involves educated guesses involving plaintext words (the computer tells you how many letters there are and which ones are right and in the right place, i.e., lets you play Mastermind with the password system), and passwords that get given to you run the gamut from the name of the daughter of the Vault Overseer to a hexadecimal pointer string. The last mission even ends with you inputting a security code that's never told to you outright but you've been hearing throughout the storyline. Bad Wolf?
• The same case in Fallout: New Vegas. While seemingly the HELIOS One password is super long, those who understand the code can notice that it is not that secure at all. Tabitha also uses the password of 123456789 for Raul's cell. Finally, the password for the executive level of REPCONN headquarters is 'Ice Cream', which can be correctly guessed by the player character with high luck or very low intelligence. In fact, the Override Command for the New Vegas Strip's securitrons is '1C 3C R34 M'. In the case of Raul's cell, he purposely made the password simplistic since his boss demanded it needs to be password-locked, and he thought that no one would ever bother reading his journal entries in the nearby terminal that outright state the password.
  • In Dead Money, the password to the basement elevator is a line from the in-game song "Begin Again", which only works with Vera Keyes's voice, so either Christine, who has had her voice reconfigured to that of Vera, has to say the words, or you have to play a holotape found in the dresser.
• And the system returns in Fallout 4, where the Boston Public Library has 123456 as an employee ID number, and the code to enter the Railroad HQ is simply "Railroad". The Railroad justifies their lack of security with how very few Wastelanders can spell or read, but the Brotherhood of Steel easily invades them late in the game.
• The passwords in Fantasy Quest seem random enough, but you have to question why they're written on notes nailed to trees. (The sequel answers the question.)
• In Fate/Grand Order, Kirschtaria Wodime is, by magus standards, a prodigy at technology. Unfortunately, "pasword security" is a skillset he never had time to master - one of his allies, seeking his files, guessed his computer password in the third try; the first time, it was the name of their group, and the second time, inputting the initials of the members of the group, he was off only by a single letter - and once he substituted that person's initial for his nickname's initial, the machine let him in.
• In Final Fantasy VII, the mayor lets you guess a password to get something extra. It's multiple choice, and he tells you you can guess it by interpreting some clues involving the letters in the reports on the shelves of the library. The password is randomized each playthrough, but it always turns out to be one of the following: BEST, KING, BOMB, MAKO. If you get it on the first try, you also get an "Elemental" Materia as a bonus.
• Final Fantasy XIII-2 has two separate numeric codes in two separate regions of an absolutely massive tower run by a sentient AI. One has several duplicate scientists muttering the numbers, in order between your entry point and the place you enter it, and the other has the AI rambling it over the intercom.
• Final Fantasy XIV: The Shadowbringers story quest "The Wisdom of Allag" tasks the player and their NPC allies with retrieving a report on primal tempering. The thing turns out to be password-locked, however, and their guesses of "Glory to Allag", "Long live Emperor Xande", "Wild Rose", "Courage", and "Password" all turn out fruitless — the Archive Node even calls out that last, saying "The notion that the password could be something so inane would be laughable were it not dangerously stupid." Ironically, the next quest in the line reveals, via a literal dictionary attack, that the password was the equally-insecure "Freedom"... and that this was entirely intentional, as the report's author, severely punished for writing it and knowing it would soon be expunged from the archives, wanted to make sure that the report remained easily accessible to those with his same interest in curing primal tempering.
• Parodied in Forum Warz Episode 2 where the password to access the Pentagon turns out to be "asdf" (if you don't get it, look at your keyboard). It doesn't work until it's revealed to you, however.
• In the fifth Freddi Fish game, Kipper is locked out of the computer at her taffy shop as she is unable to remember the password. When Freddi and Luther retrieve the trading card the password was written on, the password turns out to be "Kipper". Kipper attributes her inability to remember that her own name was the password to eating too much taffy.
• In Gato Roboto, after completing all three sections, Kiki prepares to enter the lab, only to discover that a passcode is required. Gary offers to decode it, but before he could do so, he is suddenly attacked and goes off-line. As a result, Kiki needs to head back to the ship to retrieve the decoder. Once that is done, the passcode turns out to be "Meow". Later, at the end of the game, Otto, in Gary's body, orders Kiki to surrender after he destroys her mech suit. The computer again requires a passcode, but, desperate to get Kiki's consciousness transferred to Barkley's body, Otto squanders his chance to say the passcode for the Hydroglobular Tubes by telling the computer that its assistance is not required, thus giving Kiki the opportunity to say it, which is, again, "Meow", thus releasing Barkley from the tube he was in, and resulting in Otto's death.
• Parodied in Grim Fandango. Manny attempts to hack Domino's computer using phrases like "Golden Boy" but fails to guess the password.
• iOS game Hack Time has this as its main way of solving puzzles. You log into somebody's account and look to see they've sent an e-mail to somebody else talking about "how much you love X". While X will generally take a little bit of figuring out (and maybe a Google search), their favorite thing will almost always be their password for two systems. Later you also have to figure out an authorization code... which is easily figured out by going to an in-game website and putting in their password.
• From Half-Life 2:
  Rebel 1: What's the password?
  Rebel 2: Password!
  • And then in Episode One:
    Rebel 1: What's the password?
    Rebel 2: I'm not even going to tell you to shut up.
• Halo 3 has a funny version of this as an Easter Egg. A marine is banging on a door, demanding to get in, but he doesn't know the password. There are three different exchanges, depending on the difficulty level, and they are all voiced by the guys from Red vs. Blue. Transcripts and mp3 files here. Snippet:
  Guard: Password?
  Marine: Oh, man... I forgot!
  Guard: Forgot... what?
  Marine: I forgot the password!
  Guard: See, that was almost right! Ah, see, the password BEGINS with "I forgot", but ends differently.
• A variation of this occurs in Hatred where the main character tries to guess the password to access the computer network of a nuclear power plant and trigger a meltdown. Not only is the password a simple 3-digit number, but the number is whatever the player enters on their first try.
• In Heavy Rain, the Origami Killer's password turns out to be the name of his brother's paper dogs: Max, something you learn just a few minutes prior to needing it.
• Korsica from Hi-Fi RUSH is the only director to use a password that she keeps in her head to access SPECTRA, unlike the rest of the directors, who instead use access keys, making her the only director who The Resistance can't simply brute force their way through. However, when the time comes to use said password to shut down SPECTRA, the password is revealed to simply be "PASSWORD". Vandelay Technologies' Head of Security, ladies and gentlemen.
• A safe in Hitman 3 opens with the code "1975", the year safe owner's brother died. It turns out she killed him. In case the player doesn't make the connection, or simply hasn't discovered the relevant info yet, a series of pictograms above the safe point to various objects in the room, each of which has a nearby plaque with the corresponding digit engraved on it.
• Hopkins' computer password in Hopkins FBI is his last name.
• In Hypnospace Outlaw, GearHeadGregg is normally the go-to guy for using Hypnospace more effectively, but security is not his strong suit. His password advice is as follows: the town you live in, your favorite hobby, and your birth year, giving a hypothetical example of "DenverComputers1970". The problem is, you can view anyone's town and age. Including his. ConniesConnections calls Gregg out on how bad this advice actually is, but he Can't Take Criticism and stands by it.
• In Impossible Mission, the password is always a nine-letter English word (and there are only a dozen or so possible options anyway). However, in this game you're not allowed to guess, and you have to recover each letter one by one by stacking oddly shaped code cards.
• Kingdom Hearts II:
  • The password to the DTD dataspace in Ansem's computer is comprised of the names of the 7 Princesses of Heart, who are necessary to get to the real DTD (Door to Darkness). The MCP even lampshades this when he finds out what it is, stating that it was a simple password. When Tron changes it to lock the MCP out, he makes it "Sora, Donald, Goofy" after his newfound friendship with them.
    • This password is actually much stronger than it seems on closer analysis, much like the "eight characters and a capital" example under "Jokes." The password is at minimum 47 characters long, which would take quite a while to brute force even for the MCP ("reasonably secure" passwords tend to be between 32 and 128 characters long). Another obstacle is that even if you know the namespace, getting the princesses in the right order requires testing up to 5040 possible combinations. And finally, there's punctuation and capitalization that could throw an attacker off even further (for example: is "Snow White" one word or two?) Sora and co. were very, very lucky to get it right on the first try.
  • In the same world, the access to the Chamber of Repose appears to be the names of the six people who made it - namely, the Somebodies of the first six members of Organization XIII. This one doesn't even have the justification of the DTD, as the cutscene shows six different inputs for passwords. This one also requires a disc to even access it, so it's slightly justified. There is also a minor catch for anyone who figures out the Organization's Significant Anagram Theme Naming: Xehanort took the name 'Ansem' before he became a Nobody, and 'Xemnas' is perceived from that, but the password corresponding to the Superior is 'Xehanort'.
  • The password to Ansem the Wise's computer in the Twilight Town mansion's basement is "sea-salt ice cream", his favorite flavor.
• The password needed to delete KinitoPET's server is "hello_world123".
• In Last Word, the St. Lauden military system of using codes for the noble houses just writes them in SMS-speak, with Prattle House being PR8TL, Boasting being 80AST, etc. To be fair, apparently it isn’t supposed to be a huge secret, and Saymore House’s code is a more respectable (but still punny) W84ME. However, there's still no excuse for Ms. Saymore to then use her own family house's code as a password to a hidden passageway.
• In Legend of Mana, you meet a band of pirate penguins who ask you "What be the password?". And the password is? "What", of course! If you use that as your guess, the penguins are ready to accept you as one of their own until the captain points out that you're rather obviously not a penguin.
• Played for laughs in a side quest in The Lord of the Rings Online where a hobbit overhears what he thinks are plans to commit treason. The correct password to enter the headquarters is "Another conspirator is here", in reply to which the guard outside the door comments that they should've picked a better password.
• In Loadstar, Tully uses the password "Surrender Dorothy" to try to open the gates of the police depot. To Mort's surprise, it works. Tully then says the password is the same all over the Solar System.
• In MapleStory the password to the Desert Scorpion's cave isn't written down anywhere, but when you try to enter, the narration gives you a hint by saying that since it's a cave in the desert, the answer should be obvious. It's "Open Sesame".
• Played painfully straight in a subplot of Marvel Ultimate Alliance. In order to find out whether Black Widow has turned traitor, you need to figure out the password to the personal S.H.I.E.L.D. accounts of both Nick Fury and Black Widow herself. In both cases, it's the name of a friend, and thus easily guessed. And this is despite them both being top-row members of an international anti-terror organization!
• Mega Man
  • Mega Man Battle Network usually hides 'secure' passwords in the form of security certificates and keys that MegaMan.EXE needs to retrieve, but in a few instances, he merely needs to punch in simple 3-or-4-digit combinations, or sometimes run across proportionately huge floor tiles to spell out the passwords, which tend to either be very easy to guess via dictionary attacks, like 'SPIDER' or 'BADGER' or 'YESTERDAY'; sometimes, hints will be given to him by very helpful programs.
  • Mega Man Star Force has a one-digit password. And you are given the hint that it's the number of planets in the Solar System. And if you get it wrong, it will tell you all the planets. The one catch is that the game came out shortly after Pluto's planet status was revoked, so it's possible to enter the incorrect number 9, but the aforementioned hint all but guarantees you'll get it right on your second try. One has to wonder why they even bothered.
• Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge features a sequence during which, in order to progress with a certain portion of the storyline, you have to win at a simple spin-the-wheel gambling game. To do this, you have to get insider info from the Gambler's Guild (the correct number to bet on isn't even on the list of responses unless you've gotten it from the man behind the door). To get this info, you have to give the password. The thing is, it's unorthodox, but depending on how quick you are at making connections, you can figure it out watching it given once. The man behind the door will hold up some fingers and say "If this is X (where X is between 1 and 5), then what's this?" and hold up a different number of fingers. The answer is however many fingers he held up when he gave the number X.
• Moshi Monsters has the mission "Candy Cane Caves", in which the password to get into the cave was "password".
• One of the Nancy Drew computer games has a combination lock of the case's victim able to be opened by looking at a phone and using the numbers that correspond to his name, Jake. More complex then some of the examples but painfully simple at the same time.
  • Other games in the series run the gamut, ranging from "unable to guess" to "HEY, THIS IS MY PASSWORD!"
    • In Treasure in the Royal Tower, you can't find a security alarm's passcode written down or spoken anywhere; rather, the game requires you to use the real-life technique of tripping the alarm, hiding, watching the alarm's owner punch in the correct code, and then dusting the keypad with powder to trace his fingerprints and collect the right series of numbers.
    • Played straight in The Phantom of Venice. Nancy needs to log into the computer of Antonio Fango, who seems to be in a gang of thieves. Now, these thieves have decided to model themselves after the commedia dell'arte, a form of extremely popular Italian theatre in which most characters wear distinctive masks. Fang's log-in icon is a picture of one of these masks ("Il Capitano", for the curious), which any Italian individual could probably identify immediately. And just to be on the safe side, he has a giant poster listing the character's names and masks hanging on a wall in his closet. How did the police not catch on?
    • In Curse of Blackmoor Manor, a (supposedly) computer-savvy character seals his computer with a password. What's the code? The motto on his personal crest (all of the family members have one), which is hanging in full view on the wall just outside the library which houses the computer.
    • In general, padlocks/passwords in these games tend to be solved through a Chekhov's Skill: a book, website, or conversation will describe how to perform a specific task, and later in the game, Nancy will find herself having to do that very task to gather the required information.
• In NEEDY STREAMER OVERLOAD, Ame requests that P-chan log into her KAngel Tweeter account, whose username is kawaiiangel. Her password is kawaiiangel2.
• Parodied in Nellie Cootalot: The Fowl Fleet when Lucky Jack says that the password to get in behind the action at the Toff Races is "R!dx5pF2z", which he claims is his mother's maiden name.
• In Oddworld Stranger's Wrath, there's a Black Market Store in which Stranger needs a password to get in. Obviously, he doesn't know, but can get the password from one of the Clackers nearby. The password is Molasses, but he still says it wrong.
  Shopkeeper: What's the password?
  Stranger: Uh, Mole's Ass?
  Shopkeeper: Ehhh close enough.
• PAYDAY 3: Dirty Ice has three possibilities for the code to the basement - it will either be the ID of the employee of the month (found in the main room), the wifi password (found in the lunchroom), or a random code left out in the open (in the VIP room). An email in the manager's office lampshades the manager's lax security:
  VIP room: "I changed the passcode to the basement, as you asked. And I left it on top of the storage cabinet in the VIP room...as you requested. Again, I strongly advise against leaving codes out in the open like this."
  Lunchroom: "I changed the passcode to the basement, as you asked. It's now the same as the wifi password on the lunchroom whiteboard. Not the most brilliant move, but you're the boss, and I'm just the security expert..."
  Front room: "As you requested, I changed the passcode to the basement to the ID number of the employee of the month frame in the front room. I said my piece regarding the risks of doing so. And look at that, you elected yourself as the employee of the month...wow."

• Phantasmagoria 2: Curtis' password on his work computer is "Blob", the name of his pet rat whom he constantly fawns over and has a huge framed photograph of on his desk. Yeah, that's not obvious at all. Then again, his boss isn't much better making his password "Carpediem", a phrase he has on an obvious plaque mounted on his wall.
• One of the puzzles in Planetarium involves figuring out a password from a riddle. The password is "password". The riddle giver even lampshades this by saying that they need to change "the answer" every time someone figures it out.
• Portal Stories: Mel: Repeatedly played with. Virgil tries hacking into old computers by trying out some passwords. "password", "admin", "letmein", "123456", "0000", "blackmesasucks". After that he gets locked out and it now requires an admin override. He blames the plants interfering with his Wi-Fi and then he hopes if he keeps staring at the main computer, something will work eventually. The player can now help him with the admin override button. Or listen more to him getting a screensaver, the computer getting into sleep mode, trying to reason with it, then somehow succeed in the hacking.
• In Professor Layton and the Last Specter, Luke has hidden in his bedroom and refuses to come out, and as a test, he designs a riddle challenge. He tells the professor "You can't do anything to solve this puzzle." There are numerous items around Luke's door, and clicking on some of them reveal that they have numbers written on them; it seems like the puzzle is about arranging them somehow. This is all a phony. Professor Layton correctly determines that the key is to transpose Luke's words, meaning they read "To solve this puzzle, you can't do anything." He and his assistant Emmy proceed to stand still and quiet for a minute, which turns out to be right; "doing nothing" was the password all along.
• Quest for Glory IV acknowledges this trope by teaching a thief character that people are really dumb about their passwords, and it's usually an object or picture nearby.
  • The password for a Filch-brand Safe is... "Filch". At least it's pretty non-obvious: the safe has only every other letter on it (A, C, E, G, I, K), while there are blank spaces in between. So it's not immediately obvious what the code should be.
  • Another part of the game has the player investigating the crypt of the Borgov family, which has a hidden passageway leading to the Big Bad's castle. In the middle of the floor is a relief of the Borgov family crest, which features a rainbow pattern on one side. Pressing the colors Blue, Orange, Red, Green, Orange, and Violet opens a panel which contains the key you need.
• Guess what the final password in Resident Evil – Code: Veronica is. No, go on. Guess. It is rather easily solved with a document by Alexander Ashford that says the password is name of his "beautiful ancestor". Justified because the base was meant to be blown up easily — so no one would find the family secret. Not to mention Alexander's utter obsession with his ancestor Veronica.
• Sam & Max: Freelance Police:
  • While the swordfish example listed in the swordfish group was a subversion, the series plays it straight with passwords that are just as bad in later episodes. In "Reality 2.0", Sam & Max have to find the password to Bosco's. They soon find out the password is "Bosco", which itself is a reference.
  • In "Chariots of The Dogs", the duo discover a numbered keypad in Bosco's place and need to find the a code to enter into it in order to open a secret room. Max suggests typing in "8008135" (Which is boobies typed in numbers) just for laughs, but Sam suggests finding out the real code rather than just press random buttons. Take a guess at what the code is.
• Subverted in Second Sight. When the player attempts to use a computer without knowing the password (found out via scripted events) then John Vattic (the main character) will enter generic "stupid" passwords such as password. Many of the actual passwords are quite poor (for example a soldier in Siberia has "snow" as his password, although it took a psychic reading his mind to find out).
• Several passwords (in investigation or sabotage missions, usually) in The Secret World are written on nearby notes, or use relatively easy to find clues. (All passwords have hints that can be researched, the research being a major challenge of the missions, but a lot of them avoid this trope be being obscure and difficult to figure out.)
• Averted in Shadowrun Returns: Hong Kong. Matrix passwords obtained by hacking are always very secure strings of numbers, letters, and punctuation. Fortunately the game doesn't make you enter them manually.
• The principal's PC in Silent Hill: Shattered Memories. Technically not the password, but a series of answers to security questions to tell it to reset the password. The answers are found all around the office.
• Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves has this in the first area. To stop the machines going at the Cooper Vault, Sly has to go in and input a three-digit password. However, the person who originally set the password was a stupid Mook, so it remained "123," much to the Big Bad's consternation. All the other safes in the other games were better at passwords, but they left clues to the codes everywhere. Paintings, scattered bottles, and the enemy you're going up against is a master thief who has a penchant for completely cleaning out an area.
• Taken to absurd lengths in Sonic Adventure, with the password to enter the Egg Carrier Chao Garden. The keypad consists of only the letters you need, and while they're shuffled into a random order every time you enter the room, it's still extremely easy to figure out what they're supposed to spell. And just in case you still can't figure it out, there's a Hint Box right next to it that just straight-up tells you what the password is. It is, of course, "EGGMAN".
• In Sonic Adventure 2, the code to access both Project: Shadow and to fire the Eclipse Cannon (a weapon capable of destroying the entire planet if fully-powered) is Maria. Even if this wasn't the name of the granddaughter of the scientist in charge of both projects, it's still only five letters, and three Japanese characters, since Robotnik clearly presses three keys, one for each syllable. Of course, this may have been intentional.
• At the end of the normal route in Sore Losers, the password for hacking into the security system is its programmer’s date of birth. You discover this through an email conversation on another computer where said programmer is mocked for doing so. Weirdly, entering his date of birth before reading the email conversation gives you error message.
• And of course there's the granddaddy of stupid password in games, played for laughs in Space Quest II: Vohaul's Revenge where one of the aliens tells you that when you're ready to open the passage, "just say the word." The passage is opened for you when you simply enter the command "WORD".
  • In Space Quest I, the code to activate the Star Generator is 6858, the last four digits of Sierra On-Line's phone number. The VGA remake uses a randomized code, though.
  • The Space Quest fangame Vohaul Strikes Back features a double subversion. Try as you might, you won't guess the password (though several guesses will give snarky responses). After several failures, a "Forgot password?" link appears, which gives some security questions, one of which is blatantly obvious. Answer that, and you can gain access.
• Splinter Cell has a lot of doors locked by key code. It also has a lot of fun with those codes being incredibly easy to acquire, each mission having at least two codes retrieved just by reading someone's email. In the first game, you can even find an email from The Dragon in a late-game mission complaining about the "security catastrophe" caused by people transmitting all the local door codes via insecure emails, forcing you to find alternate methods (usually involving your thermal goggles) to find out the codes for doors - and then you go back to deal with a different villain whose mooks didn't get the memo, and you're right back to acquiring door codes by reading emails.
• In an episode (Uneasy Allies) of Star Trek Online we learn from Empress Sela that every imperial Romulan computer has an override—Username Sela, password Empress One. Granted, there may be some kind of recognition software involved as well, but it is never stated.
• In-universe example: in Still Life 2 the killer's passwords for the first half of the game are all personal information easily researched by others. Turns out, those are the ones you were supposed to figure out.
• At one point in Super Mario RPG, villainous Booster speaks a password to open a door. In an interesting variation, the password is whatever you, as the player, named your save file. Also, on the Sunken Ship, there's the locked door leading to the King Kalimari fight—in this case, the password is always 'pearls'.
• In the first training level of Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror, the keycode to open the locked door is 989, after 989 Studios.
• In System Shock 2, a lot of information is found in discarded audio logs, and of course the game contains a smorgasbord of logs starting with "So I changed the password to 1234..."
• Two examples pop up in The Journeyman Project series.
  • In the remake of the first game, Pegasus Prime, Gage Blackwood has to stop a robot from launching nuclear missiles from the NORAD VI military base. When he reaches an override terminal to do so, a monitor reveals the launch code to be eight zeroes.
  • At the end of the second game, Buried in Time you have to guess the password to access the computer systems on the traitor's time travel suit. It turns out to be the name of a hobby displayed prominently on their personnel file.
• Team Fortress 2:
  • In "Meet The Spy", the password to a padlock is... 1111. Then the BLU Heavy knocks down the door before either the BLU Soldier and the BLU Scout could open the door anyway, indicating that just about any weapon used by the cast would smash the door open. It doesn't help that the '1' key on the keypad is the only key that's less than spotless, if you look. If '1111' doesn't work, then you just haven't pressed it the correct number of times, apparently. However, this doesn't stop the Soldier from getting confused midway through. "One, one, one, er... one."
  • "Expiration Date" reveals that the RED team uses the same password for the door in their van, as it has a similarly single worn button.
• In TimeSplitters Future Perfect, this is averted in 1994, where a password is a string of numbers and letters; lampshaded in 2052, where Amy accesses Crow's computer, saying, "Anyone who uses his own name as a password deserves to be hacked"; and played straight when four Cortezes have to open a "Dual-Key" security door, and the passwords are "banana" and "lollipop".
• Played with in Uplink: administrators have random sequences of characters for passwords, which furthermore tend to change just after the player hacks the system. Civilians, however, use regular words for their bank account passwords. Another note is that there are two password-breaking programs available to buy in the game. One is the Dictionary Hack, and the other is simply called Password Breaker. Nobody actually uses the dictionary program as it won't always get you into a system, whereas the simple brute-force Password Breaker will get you in 99.99% of the time. There are also five passwords that never change:
  • The accounts the player actually uses personally.
  • InterNIC, which is always a random word selected when your player account is created.
  • A Shout-Out to WarGames, and will always have Joshua as the password and zero security. It's also the only password in the game that can't be cracked by the Password Breaker program—you need to get the reference.
  • The testing system always has the password rosebud.
  • The voice print ID always has this sentence to be spoken aloud (or via the Voice Analyzer program), no matter what system it is: "Hello, I am the system administrator. My voice is my passport. Verify me."
• The customer service office in Vampire Ltd has a list of the previous year's twelve most common passwords. "12345678" is in first place, while "password" is seventh.
• Lampshaded in Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: passwords for computers are usually related to the owner in some way, except for a programmer, who laments in an email about a superior's password being his name backwards.
• One dungeon in Wild ARMs: Alter Code F has the group held up by Zed until they can give him the password. He goes away when you just tell him "password".
• When Elly attempts to access her father's computer in Xenogears, she first ventures that it has something to do with her, so she guesses her full first name, ELHAYM. When that fails, she tries it again backwards, MYAHLE, which works.
• The Full Motion Video The X-Files Game:
  • Played straight when you try to find the password to your own computer which turns out to be a place from a postcard tagged on the wall next to your desk.
  • Subverted when you find Scully's laptop. It's password-protected, and you can ask Skinner for suggestions on what the password might be. None of his guesses (such as "faith") are correct, and after three incorrect tries the laptop locks you out. In fact, it's impossible to gain access to the laptop. You have to send it to the FBI's IT division to get it hacked, so that it can later be stolen just before you get the information inside.

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